Optimal Control of H-Mode Tokamak Plasma Temperature based on Pontryagin's Principle

TL;DR

This paper develops a novel optimal control method for H-mode Tokamak plasma temperature using Pontryagin's principle, incorporating an adjoint-based feedback controller for real-time system steering and profile tracking.

Contribution

It introduces a new control technique within Pontryagin's framework for Tokamak plasma, including a feedback controller and an algorithm for profile tracking based on experimental data.

Findings

Effective real-time control of plasma temperature achieved

Convergence analysis on nonlinear PDEs demonstrated

Algorithm successfully tracks plasma profiles in experiments

Abstract

This paper studies the decay of an objective functional using a new control technique within Pontryagin's framework. Convergence analysis is carried out on the infinite-dimensional space of Tokamak plasma dynamical state as described by weakly decoupled nonlinear partial differential equations. An adjoint-based optimal control is derived to minimize the deviation from a predefined dynamical trajectory leading to the desired target state at stationary regime, by turning Pontryagin's transversality conditions into a continuum of horizons. A feedback controller is proposed to steer the system efficiently in real time, as opposed to an open-loop controller resulting from the classical Pontryagin's setting. An algorithm synthesizing the constraint-free optimal controller is used for profile tracking based on experimental data.